DANGEROUS ARRANGEMENTS

FROM THE CITY TO THE SUBURBS

We remained in Queens until I turned eight years old, then my parents much like their many Malayalee peers, decided to leave the city for the suburbs of Nassau County, Long Island. 

They bought a home in a town called Elmont and we lived a block away from my mom and dad's best friend and her family. I was still going to continue my piano lessons with Ms. Kwan back in Queens, so I wasn't completely disappointed by the move.

After we settled into our new home in Long Island, my parents pretty much continued to live as they did in Queens. We also still had some of my mom's relatives living with us, including my maternal grandparents who took turns going back and forth from India to NY. When she was here, I took every opportunity I could to spend time with my grandmother.

We routinely continued to attend the same Malayalee Pentecostal Church in East Elmhurst. We went there up until I was 11 and when my father and another church member's wife were accused of having an affair by mother and some church members. 

We abruptly left church one day after my father violently went after my mother in front of the congregation. Many people got in between them so he wouldn't be able to strike her. It ended with the whole church breaking out in complete chaos as my father demanded that my brothers and I join him as he exited the church, leaving my mother behind with the remaining members. 

My father decided to never go back to church after that incident and my parents were now considering divorce as well.

Some of the esteemed members of the church came to our home trying to counsel and advise my parents out of divorcing for the sake of their kids, religion and community. Weeks after all of this went down, my father and mother would continue to break out into heated arguments that usually resulted in my mother bleeding on the floor and my brother Matt also beat up from trying to protect her. 

My dad would then demand that Peter and I stop crying and to put our shoes on. We regularly got in the car with him and he'd drive us to Toys 'R' Us, telling us to buy whatever we wanted. Even though we didn't want to go anywhere with him and would have preferred to stay with our mom, we did what he told us to do for fear that he would turn his rage on us if we didn't.

This was the usual sequence of events for months after we left the church and my father's affair with this other woman ceased. Eventually, the elders of the church stopped coming by and my parents did reconcile their marriage to some degree, but not to the once former glory of their love. 

They were living and sharing the same home, but it was evident that they were more distant than ever.

It was also during this season of my life when I lost my grandmother. I received word that she had fallen ill in India and suddenly passed. I was devastated by her death and could do nothing to tame the sadness within me. I spent many nights reading Psalm 91 out loud as I would often do with her for comfort. 

She used to tell me to commit that chapter to memory and to read it whenever I felt far away from her. I hated to think that I would never see her again and would now be left alone to deal with the ongoing problems that continued to plague me in our home.